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Elzbieta Matynia is Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and founding director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS). Her research in political and cultural sociology focuses on democratic transformations, gender and democracy, the borderlands of a shared Europe, and more recently on the challenges faced by democracies emerging with a legacy of violence.

Her book Performative Democracy (2009, Paradigm) examines a potential in political life that easily escapes theorists: the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens, and identifies the conditions for performativity in public life. Her most recent book, An Uncanny Era (2013, Yale University Press) is a discussion on the precariousness of democracy, and early signs of its recent retreat in Central Europe).

As head of TCDS, she has developed and directs international Democracy & Diversity Institutes for rigorous study and cross-cultural research on the critical issues facing today’s world. Her book Performative Democracy (2009, Paradigm), explores a potential in political life that easily escapes theorists: the indigenously inspired enacting of democracy by citizens. Challenges following 1989 are explored in her An Uncanny Era. Conversations between Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel. (2013 Yale University Press). A Fulbright research scholar in South Africa, she is working on a new book, Democracy After Violence. Elzbieta is a member of the editorial board of Social Research.

Book Chapters

Democracy Dies in Darkness,Dramaturgien des Widerstands. Internationale "künstlerische" Positionen" zu "Freiheit" und" Unfreiheit. (Dramaturgies of Resistance - International Artistic Positions on Freedom and Repression), published in German and in English, Impressum: Berlin, 2018. A shorter version in Public Seminar.

Research Interests:

Research in political and cultural sociology focusing on democratic transitions in Eastern Europe and beyond and on the concept and phenomenon of the borderlands in the emerging “shared Europe”. A more recent interest concerns the relationship between social misconceptions about other peoples and violent conflicts.

Awards And Honors:

Vratislavia Grato Animo, Silver Medal of Gratitude awarded by the City of Wroclaw, 2018